Up to now Muti and Abbado have studiously avoided tackling Verdi's late masterpieces. Now that is changing. Both conductors are expected to tackle Otello at Salzburg next year—Abbado at Easter, Muti in the summer. In fact, Muti added Falstaff to his repertory at La Scala in June last year, and Sony Classical were there to record it. The performance was received ecstatically by Opera magazine's Italian correspondent. He described it as ''earthy and sanguine, yet elegant and sophisticated'', a verdict with which I would agree. That he also pointed to Muti's fast speeds puzzled me, since this Falstaff is about as far as it is possible to be from Toscanini's 1950 incandescent, highly charged, swift reading: with its measured tempos, it resembles more the considered, autumnal, slightly stately account of Giulini.
The performance gets off to a distinctly dull start: I've seldom heard such little ebullience and humour in the exchanges between Falstaff, Caius and his minions, and here Pons is a very penny-plain Fat Knight. Once at the Ford residence things improve vastly. We come to realize that Muti's basically relaxed, sunny approach to the score, far removed from Solti's extroversion, pays dividends. He constantly joins Verdi's glorious phrases and orchestration into a lyrical skein worth anyone's attention. As the performance progresses, Muti manages to combine delicacy with mercurial brio and wit, as at the start of the Act 2 finale, and draws wonderfully evocative wind playing in the marvellous close to the first scene of Act 3. Indeed, throughout, La Scala's orchestra is superb and seconds an interpretation that offers many rewards in terms of natural, unforced warmth and feeling, thus making one marvel again at the ripe mastery of the score itself.
Toscanini and Karajan (in 1961) also achieve these things, while adding an energy and zest not always present here at La Scala. They benefit from Falstaffs much more inclined than Pons to shape and tease their phrases and words: Valdengo through detailed coaching from the elderly maestro, Gobbi from experience in the part and a native wit (not to forget the superb Taddei on Karajan's deleted Philips version, 12/84). Pons sings most of the role more than adequately and, except for some clumsy fioriture in that first scene, with a good deal of sensitivity to Verdi's notes and markings; but in the end his is a one-dimensional portrait of a many-sided character, wanting 'face' or a chuckle in the voice. In any case, for a straight-sung performance I would prefer Bruson's for Giulini.
This central disappointment is all the more distressing when the rest of the Italian-speaking cast has so much to commend it. True the young Frontali as Ford isn't in the Panerai (Karajan) or Guarrera (Toscanini) class, but he possesses an attractively grainy, vibrant baritone and the tessitura to do the role full justice. As his wife Alice, Dessi is back on her very best form and gives a finely honed, spirited, mischievous account of the part, leading the Windsor ladies from the front with many individual flourishes, much as Ricciarelli does for Giulini or Ligabue for Solti, the best of her rivals. Manca di Nissa is an admirable Quickly. Made to approach her part, like all Muti's choices, with scrupulous accuracy, she manages a smiling, unexaggerated portrayal, beautifully sung, demonstrating the advantages of casting a youngish artist in the role. Ziegler does what she can with the subsidiary part of Meg.
The young lovers sing a treat. Opera's reviewer thought Vargas small-voiced at La Scala; on disc he gives a magically suave and sensuous account of his aria, a suitably gracious piece of singing to set before Maureen O'Flynn's pure-voiced, ethereal Nannetta, not perhaps in the class of Freni (Solti) but not far behind. The comprimaro parts are well taken. Unfortunately the recording somewhat vitiates these attributes by placing the voices too far from the microphones. La Scala may be a difficult venue in which to record, but surely modern technology ought to be able to overcome any drawback in that area.
In sum, I derived a great deal of enjoyment from this set, and would be glad to return to it again to savour its mellow yet very precise virtues, but in the context of an indifferent baritone in the title-role it cannot replace the old masters Toscanini and Karajan, or Solti's first version, in the opera's recorded pantheon.'